A Song from 'The Player Queen'

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1914from Responsibilities20 lines

Earlier titled "The Player Queen"

(Song from an Unfinished Play)

My mother dandled me and sang,‘How young it is, how young!’And made a golden cradleThat on a willow swung.

‘He went away,’ my mother sang,‘When I was brought to bed,’And all the while her needle pulledThe gold and silver thread.

She pulled the thread and bit the threadAnd made a golden gown,And wept because she had dreamt that IWas born to wear a crown.

‘When she was got,’ my mother sang,‘I heard a sea-mew cry,And saw a flake of the yellow foamThat dropped upon my thigh.’

How therefore could she help but braidThe gold into my hair,And dream that I should carryThe golden top of care?

Text: Responsibilities and Other Poems (Macmillan, New York, 1916). Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A mother sews gold for her child, dreaming she was born to rule.

The singer remembers a mother who dandled her baby, rocked her in "a golden cradle" on a willow, and sewed gold and silver thread into a gown. The father had gone before the birth. The mother wept, because she had dreamt her child "Was born to wear a crown", and she told of strange signs at the conception: a sea-mew's cry and a flake of yellow foam. So she braided gold into the child's hair and dreamed she would carry "The golden top of care", a crown that is also a burden.

Lines to remember

Was born to wear a crown.

The golden top of care?

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4The golden cradle
The mother sings over her baby, "How young it is, how young!", and makes her "a golden cradle / That on a willow swung". Gold is established at once as the colour of the child's life, and of the mother's hopes.
Lines 5 to 12Thread and tears
The father "went away" when the mother was "brought to bed". She sews on, pulling "The gold and silver thread", making a golden gown. She weeps not from joy but because she has dreamt the child "Was born to wear a crown".
Lines 13 to 16The omens
She tells of the child's conception: a "sea-mew" cried, and a "flake of the yellow foam" dropped on her thigh. These are the signs of a birth out of the ordinary, like the omens that attend heroes in old stories.
Lines 17 to 20The golden top of care
No wonder, the singer concludes, that she braided gold into her child's hair and dreamed she would carry "The golden top of care". The crown is imagined as the highest point of worry, and the question mark leaves that fate hanging.

Themes

Destiny

The child's future is foretold by dreams and omens: the "sea-mew" cry, the "yellow foam", the mother's dream of a crown. The singer looks back and asks "How therefore could she help" but prepare her for greatness. Fate seems fixed from the moment of conception, as in a ballad or a fairy tale.

The burden of rule

The crown is golden, but it is "The golden top of care". The phrase turns royalty into responsibility and worry. The mother's tears in line 11 make sense in this light: to be born to rule is to be born to sorrow, and all the gold in the poem carries that shadow.

A mother's hope

Everything in the poem is the mother's making: the song, the cradle, the gown, the braided hair. Alone after the father leaves, she pours her dreams into gold thread. The child's identity is sewn and sung into her before she can choose it.

Context

The song was collected in Responsibilities (Cuala Press, 1914), at first under the title "The Player Queen"; its subtitle here is "Song from an Unfinished Play". It comes from Yeats's play The Player Queen, which he worked on over many years and had not finished when the song first appeared in a book. Its ballad form and mysterious omens stand apart from the angry public poems around it.

Form

Five quatrains in ballad measure, alternating lines of four and three beats and rhyming on the second and fourth lines ("young", "swung"; "bed", "thread"). The mother's words are set in single quotation marks inside the singer's own. Repeated "gold" and "golden" chime through every stanza like a refrain.